Well, at least they made *some* effort at allowing third-party customization.

Hey, and at least you're still interested in getting an iPhone! I personally won't pay that kind of money for even the low-end one without more extensive programmability. I realize they really aren't targetting me, but man, it's really hard to justify that sky-high price. And the longer I've had to think about it, the less interested I've become. But who knows, maybe it'll regain some luster after release.

Bittersweet. Now I know that I can develop for the iPhone without an iPhone. Other than being pretty sweet looking I can't think of a reason to buy one.

It's kind of sad... a really geeky device that's not geek friendly. However, how long until iPhoneLinux?

Hopefully this will drive the Apple stock down to something more affordable, or they'll split again...

My current question:
Will there be a way to get my AJAX app in the main application launcher? If not, really... what's the point? Will my web based app be able to go full screen? Accept multiple touches?

And finally: Java and Flash. If my $50 phone has Java, my $500 phone had better support java. And flash, although annoying, would open up some form of development oppertunity as well.

Arg... I suppose I might actually need to get one. In other news, ebay now has one more kidney for sale

BeyondCloister Wrote:Well seeing as they went on about Web 2.0 and AJAX and then also released a product for Windows to use that same Web 2.0 and AJAX then maybe they never planned to do a non browser based API / SDK?

Sure, but then the "Full OS X. Desktop-class applications" line wasn't just misleading, but a flat-out lie.

Personally, I think this is the best idea since diced bread. Firstly, AJAX is a lot more powerful than most people think - add in the iPhone services and I expect most apps to be killer. The side note about having the services sandboxed opens up the possibility for local hard drive storage; accessing the microphone makes a Skype client viable, and so on.

Besides, not requiring an SDK means that there are already tons of very talented developers that suddenly can deploy onto the sexiest piece of mobile hardware ever. As can you. AJAX is the future of application development and you can be sure that the iPhone and Web 2.0 will play off each other well.

And, as an added bonus, Apple now piggybacks development from the entire world â€“Â*much like they do with FreeBSD. Whenever someone creates a new cool web tech, it's on the iPhone for free, right away, no questions asked.

Quote:Sure, but then the "Full OS X. Desktop-class applications" line wasn't just misleading, but a flat-out lie.

First out, we can expect there to be a real SDK eventually - I think that the FCC is meddling. That said, AJAX is desktop-class, save for persistent local storage. Having an AJAX app access certain iPhone features might alleviate that.

That said, I don't think that that line was meant for 3rd party developers, in which case it's perfectly true.

Most current cellphones supports the micro edition which is limited but more than enough to create really interesting applications and games.
Normally it isn't the API that limits the programmer, it's just that cell phones doesn't usually come with intel core-duo and 1 GB DDR2 RAM.
It would be neat if the iPhone would support some version of SE(1.42+) since it seems, unlike most other cellphones, to have enough performance.

Apple Wrote:With its advanced Safari browser, iPhone lets you see any web page the way it was designed to be seen,

The most troubling part of this non-announcement was that they were very specific about mentioning "on your server" several times.
So, if there is no local storage that means that an internet connection is required every time I want to launch the app, and that I must rely on the server to be up.

Apparently, its a simple todo list. And apparently, even for something as basic as that I'll need an Internet connection? I seriously hope that Apple is considering allowing local storage of web apps, as well as direct launch icons for them (as opposed to Safari bookmarks, which is what they showed at WWDC).

Basically Jobs made a presentation pointing out that the iPhone comes with a web browser, and cleverly worded it so people think Apple is suddenly enabling 3rd party development of some sort. It seems bizarre to me. Did no one think when it was announced that they could make an iPhone-esque website for it? The irony is that making specialized web sites contradicts the whole iPhone feature of (paraphrased) "not the mobile Internet, or the Internet Light... the real Internet." The iPhone alledgedly works just dandy with gmail, google spreadsheets, and all that junk. If you're making a website optimized for the iPhone, it's the same pony as making a mobile version of a website.... except this one has a reality distortion field.

Tools10 Wrote:Most current cellphones supports the micro edition which is limited but more than enough to create really interesting applications and games.
Normally it isn't the API that limits the programmer, it's just that cell phones doesn't usually come with intel core-duo and 1 GB DDR2 RAM.
It would be neat if the iPhone would support some version of SE(1.42+) since it seems, unlike most other cellphones, to have enough performance.

Please Apple, applets!

Yeah, I was responding to the comment about that the iPhone should support Java (applets) and Flash when a cheap phone even supports Java (micro edition). It's not exactly a fair comparison.

One thing to remember is that if you know you're just writing for WebKit, development becomes *so* much nicer than trying to maintain cross-browser compatibility.

And assuming it supports the canvas element, you can get some pretty nice-looking games up without too much effort.

I'm also pretty interested in the style of games it'll encourage. Perhaps we'll start to see more games coming out in the style of the early Mac games, where it seemed like every pixel mattered. I think one of the first things should be a port of Uninvited. I'd play that.